This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

We’ve speculated so often on the imminent demise of the New Jersey Devils empire it seems foolhardy to do it again now.

Let’s face it. Lou Lamoriello has fooled the hockey world more than once.

Like when Scott Stevens retired. When Scott Niedermayer left. When Martin Brodeur started getting old and getting hurt. When the team seemed boxed in on the salary cap. When Brian Gionta bolted. When the Devils missed the playoffs two seasons ago.

Every time the Devils proved the doubters wrong. Last season’s surprise run to the Stanley Cup final was Lamoriello’s best trick yet, evidence that his organization’s emphasis on the fundamentals of drafting, developing and team building could be just as effective now as it was when Jersey won its first Stanley Cup in 1995.

That said, the reigning Eastern Conference champions are now floundering, likely to be the most spectacular casualty of the NHL’s peculiar shortened season.

Article Continued Below

For a while it seemed Los Angeles, the team that beat Jersey for the Cup last June, would be in similar straits. But the Kings straightened themselves out, leaving the Devils to wallow on their own.

Lamoriello’s team is now 10th in the East and has lost eight in a row, the 40-year-old Brodeur hasn’t won a game since March 15, Ilya Kovalchuk can’t get healthy and defenceman Anton Volchenkov was sat down for four games on Thursday for elbowing Brad Marchand.

Suddenly, this is starting to look a little like Calgary East, a situation in need of a substantial step back to rebuild but one in which that approach is likely to be received badly.

It certainly didn’t start to happen at last week’s trade deadline. Instead, Steve Sullivan was acquired for a seventh-round pick, another coat of paint to try to stave off the creeping mildew that has impacted this roster since, well, Niedermayer left town after the 2003-04 season.

A steady stream of stalwarts has departed as unrestricted free agents — Niedermayer, Brian Gionta, Brian Rafalski, Scott Gomez, John Madden, Paul Martin — without fetching anything in prospects or players before they left. That has been the Lamoriello approach to dealing with free agents, and really he’s been burned only on Niedermayer and Rafalski.

Plus there was that berth in the Cup final last June, accomplished despite troubling ownership issues.

The Laws of Lamoriello, it seemed, had held fast.

But the player losses keep piling up. Last summer it was Zach Parise, which really stung, and right now the Devils are staring at the possible defections of UFAs Patrik Elias and David Clarkson, neither of whom has discussed a new contract with the team.

The Devils have some youngsters to replace these players, just not enough it appears. Adam Henrique was a fabulous third-round pick and it’s far too early to assess the professional merits of Adam Larsson (fourth overall 2011) or 2012 first-rounder Stefan Matteau.

The problem is from 2005 to 2009 — years in which at least some first-round picks should have become Devil mainstays — the club that has always prospered through the draft didn’t do very well at all with the selections of Niklas Bergfors, Matt Corrente, Jacob Josefson and Mattias Tedenby.

That has been compounded by the fact that the team’s 2004 first-rounder, centre Travis Zajac, is having a dreadful offensive season with just 15 points after signing an eight-year, $46 million (U.S.) contract right after the lockout ended.

You start to see how this adds up to a struggling team with only 15 wins. You can have all the right philosophies and team-oriented attitudes as an organization, but you need some talent to make it “doing it the right way” work.

For New Jersey, lots has been walking out the door and not nearly enough has been walking in.

The Devils went into Thursday with the 17th-best goals against numbers in the NHL (despite leading the league in fewest shots allowed), the 27th-ranked offence and one of the league’s worst faceoff records.

Kovalchuk’s absence has made everything worse, although there is still debate over whether the Devils will ever get true value out of that monster free agent contract.

We do know that it binds him to the team until 2025 when he will be 42 years old.

Shades of Roberto Luongo.

With only $38 million committed to players next season, the Devils in theory could spend their way out of this if only there were significant free agent players to spend money on.

At the other end of the spectrum, it seems against everything Lamoriello espouses as a GM to shave this thing down to the wood Edmonton-style and rebuild with high draft picks.

So this will be fascinating to watch. A reload-on-the-fly approach seems likely but it won’t be easy if Elias and Clarkson leave. And despite all evidence to the contrary, Brodeur can’t play forever.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com